The Time of Our Lives

This is my 200th post on Towards A Life Well-Lived. I started this blog when the pandemic hit, never imagining it would become a regular fixture in my life. Thanks for accompanying me on this journey!

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When I was in grade school, summer vacations lasted forever. When school ended in early June, we couldn’t even see all the way to September.

This year, I’ll turn 69. It seems like it’s only been a couple of years since my 60th birthday. What is going on with time?

As you already know, the answer is that time accelerates with age. Exhibit A is the brand new central air conditioning system we installed recently; it’s 19 years old. 

Elders marvel at time’s acceleration, but it’s just simple math. A calendar year was 10% of my life when I was ten. Now, a year is only a percent and a half of my life. No wonder it passes more quickly!

Einstein became famous for figuring out that time doesn’t pass at a constant rate.  All I can say is, duh! The length of a calendar year may not change, but the passage of time sure does. Let’s give this phenomenon a name: calendar time.

The peculiar thing about calendar time is it only impacts external things. I don’t self-identify in calendar time. The essence of “Me” hasn’t aged in fifty years. An alternate time descriptor is needed to track the deepest sense of who I am. Let’s call that soul time.

I have no idea why soul time differs from calendar time, but it does! I’m not the only one who feels that way. When I turned fifty, my Dad looked at me with amazement and said, “How can you be fifty when I feel like I’m only twenty-five?” 

Whether we recognize it or not, we all live in two time zones.

There wasn’t much difference between calendar time and soul time in grade school. I’m not sure exactly when that began to change. Maybe it was around puberty when my focus shifted to the world around me. One thing, however, is for sure. By the time I became a teenager, calendar-time took over. 

In high school, I worried about grades and my permanent record (remember that?). In college, my focus shifted to what I would major in, how I would earn a living, and when I might find a partner. By the time I graduated from college, thoughts dominated my waking hours. This continued for most of my life. 

As a senior citizen, calendar time has become problematic. I began to notice that when the mirror stopped making sense. Most of us wonder what happened to our youth, especially when it becomes clear that calendar time intends to do us in.

 Lately, I’ve been thinking about switching time zones. But how?

It’s not an easy question to answer. For starters, I’m not sure where soul time comes from. It feels real, but how do we bring the timeless internal feeling of youth out into the open?

I may have a clue. 

The switch to calendar time occurred when I became consumed by thought. Before that, as a child, I lived in the world rather than in my head. Back then, I focused on hanging out with my buddies; we didn’t have an agenda. As I grew older, my life became one big agenda!

Adults live in the world of thought, and eventually, that becomes a problem. Thoughts happen within a context, and that context is time-stamped, which means thoughts are imprisoned in calendar time. 

To exit calendar time, we must shift attention from thought to the essential feeling of being alive. A life coach might say we must bring more presence into our lives. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Have you ever tried to abandon your thoughts? 

I have, it’s not easy! 

Thoughts trigger emotions that pull us into a mental movie. That movie becomes our reality. To snap out of it, we have to switch off the projector. I’ve been working on that a lot in the wake of our son’s recent stroke. 

The trendy buzzword for redirecting consciousness away from thought is mindfulness. I’ve practiced mindfulness for years, and I’m a big fan. I accept that I should be more mindful. I should also probably take up yoga, but donning a pair of tights in a room full of medicare recipients doesn’t appeal to me.  

There’s no getting around it; the path to presence is steep. Yet, the rewards are enormous. The more conscious energy I release from thought, the more I revert to soul time, where I feel young and free. The challenge in doing that is to bring mindfulness into daily living. 

Recently, I’ve adopted a practice to work on that, and it seems to be helping. The first step is to recognize my time zone at any given moment. I know I’m in calendar time if I’m distracted, anxious, fearful, frustrated, or angry.

Once I recognize this, I imagine my life is a movie. And I ask myself, “At this very moment, am I an actor in this movie or the director?” Actors follow a prepared script, which is the case when we let emotions get the best of us.  Directors, on the other hand, step back and evaluate the entire scene. Directors have the authority to stop the cameras by saying cut!  

When embroiled in thought, I unwittingly become an actor following a script. But, when I switch the movie camera off (my thoughts), stand back, and witness what’s happening, I suddenly become a director. As the director, I can stop the action and change the scene. 

The movie practice only takes a moment and can be initiated numerous times throughout the day. Maintaining the discipline to do that is another thing, but I’m working on that.

In closing, there’s a practical reason for my newfound interest in soul time. My calendar time is running down. Fortunately, in soul time, I remain forever young.  

The times of our lives, regardless of age, are best spent in soul time. 

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